Order Must Be Restored
by Chester Teck
Summary: One-shot. "I am sorry to ask this of you..." A former SI:7 agent looks back at the time he was tasked with the impossible: to slay the champion of the enemy. Based on the Eastern Plaguelands quest line in World of Warcraft.


We rode fast and hard with the weight of our dreadful errand at our backs. Poisoned farmland and burnt-out houses flew by in a blur under a burning sky. The foul tang of the wind was a constant sting to my eyes, forcing an intermittent glance over my shoulder to wipe them with the back of my glove, and thus affording me fleeting glimpses of those who had come with me on this hell-ride to the Twisting Nether. They were as hazy shapes atop dark horses fading in and out of the mist, here and there a blade dully a-gleaming, a robe or cloak flap, flap, flapping. My friends -- my comrades -- my travel-mates on the long low road.

I had but vague recollections of this place before the War. My early years, such as they were, were spent in the greenwoods of Elwynn. But none who called themselves citizen of Lordaeron knew nothing of this -- what was the kingdom and was now the house of the enemy. Andorhal, once so fair, now a blighted ruin we had been glad to leave behind us with its pursuing legions of slavering dead. The many farmsteads now crawling with evil things, host to the billowing sources of the rot that had claimed this land. Hearthglen to the north, out of sight but not of mind, for we each of us had learned in our travels to fear the Scarlet zealots as much as any ghoul or walking skeleton. Had I not been part of a force, once, that threw down the gates of their Monastery and left our blood on their sacred floors? Revenge. The song in the blood, the fire in the heart. Another would call it irony that any should douse the flames and kill the man bringing the water-pot. Yet I did.

The Highlord's face was a bitter memory. Even beset as I was by the presence of the enemy on all sides of our furious ride, I could not dismiss his parting words from my mind -- the words that had sent me on this journey to the end. He it was who had summoned me that fateful day to the throne room in Stormwind Keep, having been convinced by reports of my service in Westfall that I was the man for his mission. I, with scarce a year in the field, fresh from the glory of that raid in the mines beneath Moonbrook where my SI:7 strike force had taken the head of the kingpin of the Defias Brotherhood. We had ended a great threat to the crown and received honors heaped upon us, yet none had thought to ask how many of us had fallen victim to Defias blades, or if those remaining had barely escaped with their lives. I, who had but played my own little part in that much-lauded victory, standing before noble Bolvar Fordragon in the corridors of power, and taking my leave with the dawning knowledge that this operation could well be my last.

At Master Shaw's behest, I made contact with a fellow field operative at the Argent Dawn camp near Andorhal. He sent me on the trail of a dead man -- three dead men. His best agents, all missing in action on the selfsame investigation the Highlord had tasked me with. I crawled the length of the former kingdom on foot, ever vigilant and ever in hiding, for the land was the enemy's and discovery would have meant swift and horrifying death -- all the worse for the unholy beginning that would be. My rations ran out leaving me soldiering on on nothing but my training and willpower. I was beginning to fear that starvation would claim me before the Scourge, when my long, lonely scavenger hunt came to a chilling and abrupt end. At the old Marris Stead, across the river, I came upon human remains bearing SI:7 insignia. Three of them, corpses so terribly mangled I could discern nothing of their former humanity. With a quick prayer for the souls of these unfortunate comrades-in-arms of mine, I reclaimed their badges as proof of their demise -- and then, hearing a noise, raised my head to a sight that so gripped me with its stark wordless horror, I would have surely joined the corpse at my feet had it not been for my fortuitous position behind convenient cover.

I returned out of the plagued wilds unkempt, exhausted, and near death with thirst and hunger. The three badges in hand, I made my report to my contact at Chillwind Camp, and to see the awful shock on his face was to see a preview of Highlord Fordragon's when I returned to Stormwind. Even then, recuperating on the flight back, I knew what had to be done -- what I would be asked to do. And I was not mistaken.

"No," the Highlord, gravely affected by the news I had brought before him, had said to me. "No. This cannot be. Order must be restored."

My orders left no room for interpretation.

Gather an army.

Return to the Plagues.

Destroy the Blightcaller.

I rode posthaste to Northshire Abbey, where my childhood friend was a priestess. Then to Sentinel Hill in Westfall, where one of my surviving brothers-in-arms from the Deadmines raid had chosen to tarry to help the local People's Militia rid the grasslands of remnant Defias. Then into the shadows of Duskwood, where a night elven sorcerer I had once made the acquaintance of had told me he would be, searching for some magical artifact or other. There, in Darkshire town, I was fortunate also to commandeer the assistance of a draenei from distant Kalimdor, a holy knight come with the intent of cleansing the tainted forest. We five set out on the long road north, and in Dun Morogh picked up two dwarven brothers, former mountaineers in the Bronzebeard army, who were making a living as sellswords. On a stop at Menethil Harbor, our good vindicator's lofty eloquence won us another companion -- an eccentric old gnome who wanted only to see the whole wide world and so 'hired' us as his bodyguards for a 'quick peek' at undead country. Our force was further bolstered when, back at Chillwind Camp, I convinced the local Argent Dawn authority to loan us a couple of his paladins, former Knights of the Silver Hand who had served under the Lightbringer himself during the War.

It wasn't much of an army as the Highlord had no doubt had in mind, but we were ten and we were a formidable front. We sketched out a rough plan of attack followed by a general agreement that I was to be in charge, as the mission was mine, and with our steeds watered and well fed, and we ourselves made as ready as could be, we gathered for a final blessing from High Priestess MacDonnell of the Argent Dawn and then galloped out into the flaming dusk.

Perhaps it was madness, to challenge evil on its own ground at the coming of night. But the whole thing was mad to begin with, and that aside none of us thought further on the slowly darkening sky as we tore across the river in the direction of the Marris Stead. The sound of our hooves must have alerted what was up there to our coming, as evidenced by the numerous pursuits we had endured on our break-neck gallop through the wilderness. But we, one and all, had no care. We were here to do the Light's work, as our draenei friend would have said. Though it flew in the face of all my training as a SI:7 man, I felt that this was a battle where stealth and secrecy had no place. We were on crusade against one of the most dangerous foes of the Alliance. Either we would bring an end to this business here, or we would fall, and leave the burden to other stalwarts to take up. Victory... or undeath.

We dismounted at the foot of the low rise and I led the way up, my trusty steels in hand. There, before the farmhouse where I had last seen him, was the tall, commanding figure in ragged forester's raiment, almost unreal in all his corrupted glory, a pair of demon hounds slavering at his feet: the Blightcaller. The dessicated, unliving remains of the one and only human ranger lord in history, "a tactical genius responsible for Alliance victories spanning a decade of conflict", Fordragon had said. Nathanos Marris -- the first and the last. Granted the honor to train as a Silvermoon Ranger under the high elves of Quel'thalas, and did he sure make a beautiful job of it. Favored disciple of the Ranger-General of Silvermoon, Sylvanas Windrunner... now the Banshee Queen of the Forsaken. As her best in life, so also in death. The Champion of the Banshee Queen.

In the face of such a foe, we reacted on instinct. The Argent Dawn paladins moved to the fore, warhammers and shields at the ready, with the vindicator close behind, brandishing his massive two-handed crystal sword high. My priestess friend hung back, flanked by the night elf and one of the dwarves furiously pounding shot into his blunderbuss, while the other dwarf spun both his axes in figure eights as he slowly advanced, growling through his beard. I crouched low and began weaving round to the side, signaling my SI:7 fellow to take the other flank, noting as I did that the old gnome had his voluminous pack on the ground and was rummaging around inside -- probably for another of those insane gadgets of his. I silently prayed he wouldn't get swallowed up whole by one of those demonic dogs before us. He'd come here thinking it was a sight-seeing expedition after all.

The undead ranger lord had turned at the first quiet scrape of my boots on the diseased earth. The crimson glow in those hollow eye sockets was a light out of the netherworld itself. Into my mind flashed the memory of a conversation I had once had with a shady man in Old Town who professed to walk the dark and secretive path of the warlock, the demon binders. He had told me of worlds beyond our own where the lords of the Twisting Nether reigned, and how he had once seen the face of one with his own eyes on a perilous errand for his elders. So vivid and so haunting were his descriptions of that hellish realm that now, staring into the face of what was once the finest champion of the Alliance, I remembered, and I believed. And I knew.

There was nothing of Nathanos Marris left in that walking corpse. Only the champion of the Forsaken: Nathanos Blightcaller.

The battle was in full swing even before I realized it. Transfixed by the red orbs as I was, I snapped back at the sound of twinned frenzied howls that split the foul, misty air like thunder. Suddenly my paladin companions were staggering back, their shields shuddering under the weight of the supernatural hounds' bestial rage, blow after clawed blow. The vindicator, seizing the opening, had charged, aiming a blow that could have cloven a tree in two -- at nothing, for the shriveled figure of the Blightcaller was all of a sudden a few feet away, twin axes opening black, weeping wounds all over the dwarf whose growls had escalated into horrible, agonized bellows. Four axes whirled for an instant, and then the dwarf was on his knees, the life bleeding from him, as the thwarted draenei charged again, crying out to the Light. There was the roar of a gun behind me, and the ranger lord's hooded head snapped back, yet amazingly the axes rose in perfect time to turn aside that enormous glittering claymore and then arc around again to bite deep into the vindicator's armor. Arcane energy flared, and our foe was forced back a step as the wounded draenei swung back his sword for another vengeful blow.

I sensed rather than saw our priestess nearing, bringing forth all the Light-given power she could muster to mend the wounds of the fallen dwarf. As our sorcerer released another spell, raining bursts of magical power on the Blightcaller, the slavering growls from somewhere to my left and right told me how our paladins were faring. I tightened my grip on my daggers and began closing in as the vindicator, his great sword now aglow with divine fire, continued to press his attack. The blunderbuss roared again, but this time it was apparently aimed at one of the hounds, for the ranger lord showed no pause in his blinding duel with the paladin from another world.

Then -- I am unsure how it happened, so swift were the movements -- the draenei's weapon went flying, and his big, silver-armored figure buckled beneath a double flurry of axe-blows, exposing the silhouette of my fellow agent as he leapt onto the ranger lord's back and plunged his short sword through that blackened heart. I found myself hurtling forward, my senses bearing dumb witness to the sight of him being thrown to the ground and hacked almost in two by a single, lightning strike. As the Blightcaller spun about to face me, the tip of my comrade's blade still glinting at his chest, I drove right in, abandoning all fear and coherent thought as I cut and stabbed at that pale, sunken face with the terrible burning eyes.

I had been considered something of a natural at the deceptive and difficult art of knife-fighting in my training. Now I faced an opponent wielding axes, with the unnatural strength of the undead and a ranger's swiftness. It was a duel the memory of which I will carry to my grave -- we sparred, the Blightcaller and I, all deft footwork and weaving slashes, for what seemed forever but was probably mere seconds at most. I inflicted several stab wounds; his axes tore spraying gashes in me. I was later told that by the time I collapsed, my vision a riot of colorful magical bursts that quickly faded to black, our Argent Dawn friends had rid themselves of the hounds and lunged to the attack, taking up where the rest of us had just fallen. Had they not distracted my adversary then, I might well have had my head hewed off by those brutal axes.

When I came to, my priestess friend was wearily helping me to my feet. I looked across to where the broken figure of the Blightcaller lay sprawled on the dark earth, near the splayed bodies of his hounds. The ground all around was littered with bones. From her, I gathered that the ranger lord, finally slowed by his own injuries and forced on the defensive, had resorted to dark sorcery, raising a host of skeletal minions that had very nearly been the end of us all had not the disabled draenei suddenly lurched back into action, joining his powers of Light with hers to burn them all to dust. It was not until years later that I was to learn the cause behind the vindicator's unexpected, unassisted, and most timely recovery: a Light-borne gift to the draenei race that granted them the holy power of healing. That day, that gift saved us all. Freed of the menacing skeletons, our gnomish companion had finally been able to bring his one and only weapon to bear -- a gadget known as the Gnomish Death Ray, a lethal device which drew on the user's life force to operate. The thunderous blast of energy from the thing had killed the old gnome, dazed everyone within earshot -- and nearly struck the Blightcaller flat on his worm-infested back, opening room for the others to turn the tide. Our surviving dwarven friend, enraged by his brother's fall, had strode over to the ranger lord's writhing form and put about a dozen steel slugs into the hooded skull, ending the whole affair.

There was no time for celebration. There were no cheers, no smiles, no grasping of wrists. The battle had drawn the attention of another force in the vicinity, and it was not until the night elf shouted a warning that we turned and saw the approaching dust clouds on the horizon. Horde, he declared. Horde scum come to defend their best with their lives. There were grim nods all around. They had left their rescue ride too late. As our priestess and the vindicator set about the arduous task of resurrecting those of us who had expired during the battle -- my SI:7 comrade, the dwarf with the axes, the mad gnome -- I limped down the rise with the others to get our horses ready. By the time the Horde contingent gained the Marris Stead, we were well into the distance, whipping our steeds for Chillwind Camp and safety. I am certain I heard the unearthly shrieks of Forsaken and a deep-throated bellow of rage from a Tauren, or perhaps an Orc, on the whistling wind as we galloped back across the river.

The next weeks passed like a dream after what we had been through. I persuaded my companions to accompany me back to Stormwind to deliver tidings of our victory, and we went by the road we had came, letting the scars of the battle fade in the warmth of camaraderie and new friendship. The draenei regaled us with tales of his home world of Argus and the history of his proud, noble people; the night elf matched his loremastery with accounts of the great War of the Ancients of ten thousand years past, leaving us to wonder exactly how old he was; the dwarves told stories of their adventures in the deep places of the earth and introduced us all to the true meaning of drink one chilly night in Brewnall Village; the Argent Dawn paladins, both grizzled veterans, spoke soberly of the glory of their old Order and their exploits in the Second and Third Wars; the old gnome, desperate not to be outdone, squeaked on and on about the places he had seen and how he wanted nothing more than to explore the Outland next. And me? Being the youngest and least experienced of the group, I found it necessary to rely on my SI:7 fellow -- and he on me -- for support in recounting the few operations we had participated in, culminating with the assassination of Edwin VanCleef that fateful day in a Defias stronghold beneath the grasses of Westfall. But when conversation yielded to the need for sleep and all were tucked in in preparation for the next day's ride, I would sit awhile at the fire, and join my childhood friend for a little talk of the old days and how we were -- being the only woman in the group and a characteristically quiet one at that, she had taken little part in our banter and story-spinning. It was the only time we had with each other... and the time of day I found I enjoyed the most.

We rode into Stormwind on a bright, sunny morning and made straight for the Keep, where the mere mention of my name gained an immediate audience with the Highlord. Contrary to what some of us had expected, Fordragon did not rejoice at the news of the Blightcaller's fall. As we ten stood before him in the throne room, the royal guards present eyeing each other in awe when my words were done, he slowly shook his head, saying nothing for several long moments. Then he spoke, in a low whisper that nonetheless carried to all who listened. I remember it as clearly as if it were yesterday --

"It is a tragedy," he said. "I think... I believe that our kind is cursed. We are cursed to lose our greatest warriors; our most noble heroes; our most gifted scholars."

He paused, and then, fixing me with his stern gaze, went on in his normal tone.

"We are indebted to you... and, I assure you, wherever Nathanos Marris is now, he smiles down upon you."

That battle and what it meant for us was a turning point in my life. As we claimed our just dues and said our fond farewells that day, triumphant in the knowledge that, together, we had struck a heavy blow against the enemies of our Alliance, I knew that it was but a beginning. With the world as it was, there would come time soon enough when the ten of us would have cause to unite in arms once again. I know they knew it as well... and we none of us were mistaken. We would stand at each others' sides at conflagrations all across Azeroth and the Outland in the years to come, braving victory and defeat, glory and ignominity, all alike, all together. Shoulder to shoulder.

But, above all, I remember the day we rode into the Marris Stead. The day we joined in battle with one of the enemy's best and did the Light's work.

The day we restored order to the Plaguelands.

* * *

_Author's Afterword: Well, I don't really know what possessed me to write this, and in a single day at that. This quest line is one of the best in pre-TBC WoW, and I guess I just felt like making something out of it. None of my customary obsessive-compulsiveness here; I simply typed it down and put it up. It's not much, just my own personal take on doing the quest line in-game, and it reflects what I was feeling at the time. I hope you liked it, but even if you didn't, thanks for reading!_


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